A LAST-DITCH attempt to halt the deportation of an asylum seeker who fears execution by firing squad has been launched on Teesside.

Kassim Kiggundu, 36, a former boy soldier, fled Uganda for the UK in 2002.

Earlier this week he was transferred from Middlesbrough to Orpington detention centre in Kent where he is being held.

He is due to be deported from Heathrow on Monday.

Mr Kiggundu was arrested when he signed on at Stockton Jobcentre Plus on Wednesday morning. From his detention he was allowed to call the Gazette.

He said: “I was detained when I went to sign on in Stockton and transferred to Middlesbrough. My flight to Uganda is March 31.”

He added: “If they take me back the courts will see me as a deserter. The penalty for that is the firing squad.”

When he arrived on Teesside he was homeless until meeting a Teesside asylum worker who alerted Stockton North MP Frank Cook who then took up his case.

He was first refused asylum, but took the decision to a tribunal in North Shields and won. But the Home Office appealed and another tribunal refused him.

Kassim said he last spoke to his wife Josephine - found by the Red Cross in Nairobi - in 2005. He has a son Salim, now about six whom he has never seen and daughters Aisha, nine, and Shamsa, eight.

An immigration service spokeswoman said they do not comment on individual cases.

Mr Cook has pledged to take his case as high as immigration minister Liam Byrne if necessary. A spokesman for Mr Cook’s office said they believed Mr Kiggundu had a “strong case for political asylum”.

In December 2006 Kassim told the Gazette he had been frog-marched at rifle point from his classroom with up to 40 other little boys and girls aged six upwards by armed troops.

He said they were marched more than 50 miles to a remote camp in the forests of Uganda and trained in war against the government.

He was eventually jailed and served three years before being discovered during a visit by the Red Cross, was “pardoned” on condition he continued military service served up to 2002, attaining the rank of captain.

But following another election he said he was arrested and tortured for three days.